Wake Up
by FloggingBri
Summary: A much needed cathartic writing...Unfortunately this is real life but I hope some one out there may find this somewhat comforting and peaceful. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Christmas Day that ruined the Christmas holiday for me. If this is not allowed, I will remove it...
She looked blankly at the dead body in front of her. There were no tears...there were none to give anymore.

This man that had been her hero, her rock...her everything for twenty-two years was dead. On Christmas Day. The one day that she had dreaded for him to die on; Christmas had always been a day of joy and now it was a day of sadness, absolute sadness that drowned her.

She went slowly into to the room where the motionless body laid and for a minute, her five year old self came out.

"Wake up...Please, wake up." She shook him...actually shook him, trying to wake him up.

She looked at his motionless body and said to no-one in particular, "He's so cold..."

With that she broke and every wall she had put up over the last three weeks broke letting the emotions pour through her.

"Wake up! Daddy! Wake up!" She screamed at him. He didn't move and her mother sobbed in the corner of the room and ran out at this. She was left alone with him...but it wasn't him - not anymore. He had moved on to where ever one goes when one dies.

She grabbed onto his hospital gown and actually shook him, quietly saying "Daddy" over and over again.

He never moved...

She closed her eyes and allowed her adult self push the child in her back. She opened her eyes again and looked at the dead body in front of her.

She unlocked the guard rail and lowered it, crawling into bed next to her deceased father.

"You're so cold..."

She laid next to him for seconds, minutes, hours...she didn't know anymore.

"I love you...I always will." She kissed his cool forehead.

Finally, she got up, went to the bathroom and splashed cold water upon her grief and tear stained face.

She boldly walked out into the hallway where her mother, with her puffy red eyes seemed to pierce through her and a nurse with an emotionless look upon her face stood.

"Are you ready?"

She knew what her mother was asking her...she had known all along.

"Yes," was her simple reply before she walked down the hallway, unable to see what came next.

She left her mother and the nurse there to deal with the man that had been hovering for hours now trying to take his body away to be cremated.

Tears filled her eyes but would not fall...the hard bench at the entrance of the hospice center was all that was keeping her from falling through the floor and falling straight into the pits of Hell.

A woman came in with a present and a poinsettia plant. No words were exchanged as the girl held Christmas cards, lilies, and cards expressing sadness and remorse for the lose of a loved one from people she didn't know.

"Are you visiting someone?" The woman next to her spoke suddenly.

"Yes," She answered shortly. "I am."

The woman smiled. "It's a beautiful Christmas Day, isn't it?"  
Grief, sadness and the residual shocks of the fact that her father was dead still coursed through her.

"Yes, it is. It's a beautiful Christmas."

The woman was called by a nurse to be able to go see her loved one. She smiled at the young woman as she got up.

"Merry Christmas..." she said, trying to hide the sadness in her voice. "I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas."

The woman turned around and smiled. "Thank you. You too. Merry Christmas to you and your family and I hope your loved one you came to see enjoys it as well."

She blinked back tears and found a smile. "Yes...Thank you. Merry Christmas," she repeated.

Her mother came to her then, carrying the rest of her father's things and gifts they had received over the past few days while he had been at the hospice care center.

"Are you ready to go home?" Her mother asked wearily, her eyes blank and void of emotion.

"Yes," she answered shortly again. She watched the woman she had briefly had a conversation with enter a near by room and smile as she entered, hearing joy from the person she had come to visit echo down the hall. She would not let rage and jealously consume her...she silently prayed they, and every family here at the facility, a Merry Christmas and walked slowly out the door, leaving the place where she had experienced the most sadness in her life behind but she smiled weakly as people were slowly entering the building to wish their loved ones a Merry Christmas. She watched this for a moment before she entered the car with her mother and never looked back at that building again.

cathartic


End file.
